Thunderbolt Wilbur Smith (surface ebook reader .TXT) 📖

‘What do we do now, though?’ asked Xander.

Mo had unscrewed the lid of a plastic bottle and held it out. ‘We wait. We rest, hidden, here. We gather our strength to move again later.’

Xander drank and passed the bottle on to me. The other kids, following Mo’s lead, put down the bags and made themselves comfortable. I handed the water bottle along to the little guy with the big trainers. He looked so small sitting in the dirt next to me.

My leg was still pulsing angrily but at least the pain was confined to my thigh now. The bite felt hot. I thought I ought to take a look at it so, using the excuse that I needed the toilet, I leopard-crawled along the gully, tucked myself in behind a boulder, and dropped my trousers.

I gulped at what I saw. I’d definitely been bitten – or stung – by something. A dark puncture dot swam in a pool of purple-yellow, beyond which the skin was an angry red, taut with swelling. No wonder it hurt. Whatever had bitten me couldn’t have been that venomous, otherwise I’d be dead, surely? Still, it hurt enough to make me worry the tissue might be damaged or even turn septic. Would I lose my leg?

‘No use worrying about that,’ I said under my breath. ‘And no use scaring the others. Just put up with it, like everything else.’

Talking to myself was daft and reassuring at the same time.

I relieved myself, thinking I might as well while I had the chance. Then I crawled back to the others. Later, I’d check the leg again. For now, I just willed it to feel better. I wasn’t the only person in pain. Addie was nursing his ankle, and another of the boys, who I now saw had walked through the night in flip-flops, had injured his left foot, prising the nail up off his big toe. It was encrusted with dirt and dried blood. He wasn’t complaining, just inspecting it.

‘Tough choice,’ said Amelia. ‘Obviously he should clean it up to prevent it becoming infected, but if he runs out of water he’ll be compromised.’

Ignoring her, Xander knelt next to the boy and dribbled a little from his own bottle onto the wound, motioning for him to dab at it with his shirt sleeve. ‘Morale is a thing,’ he said to nobody in particular.

Mo passed around some of the congealed slop he’d folded into a bit of plastic. I took a pinch, but I wasn’t actually that hungry. The dog eyed what I ate. We’d already given it the last morsel from the traps. I took off its tether: if it wanted to go in search of food, who was I to stop it? But the dog didn’t seem to want to leave. Instead it walked round in a circle a couple of times, lay down between me and Mo, and poked its nose under its curled tail.

‘We should do the same,’ I muttered. ‘Rest, as you say.’

Mo agreed. ‘One of us should keep watch though.’

I opened my mouth to offer but he’d already turned to one of his troop, a boy with symmetrical raised scar lines down each smooth cheek. With a nod this boy folded his arms across his knees and stayed put as Mo and the others stretched out in the shadow cast by the little escarpment. They did this as if sleeping on the bare earth in the bottom of a gully as the sun rose was entirely normal.

Xander gave a little shrug and followed suit. Instantly he was asleep. He’d kept going uncomplainingly but he was at his limit. Amelia was also spent. She looked gaunt in the harsh light and her hair was matted. But before she curled up on her side like the dog she whispered, ‘Your leg, how bad is it?’

‘What? It’s fine.’

‘For me a lie is less reassuring than the truth, always,’ she said.

‘Something nipped me. It hurt for a bit but it’s OK now.’

‘If you say so,’ she said.

‘Get some sleep,’ I said.

We both lay back. I covered my eyes with my arm and tried to blot everything out. But I couldn’t. I kept thinking about Mum. I had to get back to her, but was I making that more or less likely? We could die out here and nobody would know. Eventually those dark thoughts put me under. But within what felt like seconds – in fact, given the height of the sun, it must have been a couple of hours – something woke me up.

It was the dog growling beside me. I sat up straight and saw that the kid Mo had asked to keep watch was in a crumpled heap, mouth open, asleep. The dog rumble-growled again. That wasn’t the only noise, however. Within the rushing wind a tinny, bell-like clinking was coming from behind the outcrop.

I inched my head above it and sure enough I saw a goat nibbling at the scrub about thirty metres away. There was more than one. A herd of them were coming closer. And what was worse, they were accompanied. A lone goatherd trailed along behind them. He looked straight out of the Bible, with a crook, dark robe and headdress, but there was one odd detail in the scene: he was studying his mobile phone as he picked his way towards us.

The dog was still growling. He had also woken Mo, who clocked the approaching goatherd. The goats would walk on by us if they kept going straight. I put a hand on the back of the dog’s neck, intending to soothe it. But dogs aren’t daft and the hound was a clever one. He felt the fear my fingertips were transmitting. It was my fault, not his. No doubt he could smell the goats and their owner. I obviously thought they were a threat. So he, the dog, would see them off.

I should have hung on to him but I